Primary Voices

Suddenly, And Temporarily, They're The Media Elite

January 09, 2004|By LIZ HALLORAN; Courant Staff Writer

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry was making the case Monday on CNN's ``Inside Politics'' that he doesn't have to finish first or second in the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses to stay in the race for his party's nomination.

Why?

Because, Kerry said from Iowa, ``David Yepsen, who is the expert out here, says there are three tickets out of town.''

David Yepsen? Does that name ring a bell? How about Mike Glover? Or Scott Spradling?

You're probably drawing a blank -- unless, like Kerry, you're running for president of the United States. Then you would be on a first-name basis with these guys, among the most influential people in this election cycle whom almost nobody has heard of.

Every four years, the presidential primary system creates a powerful, if temporary, media elite in Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters first get to voice their preference, and weak candidates are separated from the strong.

The exaggerated importance of these contests and their effect on the nomination race mean that statehouse reporters like Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, Glover of the Associated Press in Iowa, and Spradling of New Hampshire's WMUR, Channel 9, are the nation's eyes and ears in the crucial early days of the campaign.

Years before the media horde has descended and poll favorites have emerged, they and their colleagues at places like the Concord Monitor and the Manchester Union-Leader are bird-dogging candidates and wannabes in union halls, at county fairs and in the living rooms of regular folks across Iowa and New Hampshire.

It is through them that most of America learns about relatively unknown governors who want to be president, or get a glimpse of how a senator's Iraq war position is playing with key voters, or find out whose economic message is getting traction.

``When most Americans and most journalists aren't yet paying attention, we're out there running around. We're paying attention,'' said Glover, 55, a prolific, scratchy-voiced Illinois native who has covered campaigns for the AP in Iowa since 1976.

Their bylined stories don't necessarily air widely on television or run in many newspapers -- though if you've read an AP political story out of Iowa, Glover likely wrote it. But they are read, watched and courted by opinion makers. Their clippings, tucked in files of campaign managers and other reporters for background on stories written later, leave lasting imprints and affect the immediate fortunes of candidates trying to attract money and support.

If a candidate wants to get a message out, these are the people they call first.

Yepsen, 52, whose political column runs three times a week in the Des Moines Register, said that for the better part of a year and a half leading up to the Iowa caucuses, he is almost exclusively organizing coverage and writing about presidential politics.

The influence of reporters like him, said Iowa-born Yepsen, who has appeared as a commentator on CNN and was a questioner in a recent televised debate, is purely geographic.

``In every state there are statehouse political reporters who are prominent because the caucuses and primaries start in certain places,'' said Yepsen, who also hosts a political program on Iowa Public Television. ``That puts us on a national stage.''

But he and others who have front-row seats at the hatching of presidential campaigns claim no prescience, despite their access.

Back in February 2002, Glover was writing about little-known Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's visiting Iowa activists and touting his ``alternative vision.'' Dean was then only contemplating a presidential run.

``It would make me feel real good to tell you that a year and a half ago, I anticipated the Howard Dean boom, but I sure as hell didn't,'' said Glover, a Vietnam veteran who has lived and breathed presidential politics and the Iowa caucuses for more than 25 years.

Spradling, 32, said that a year ago he, like most everyone else, would have picked Kerry to win New Hampshire.

``I never would've said Howard Dean,'' said Spradling, a Syracuse University graduate who came to WMUR after a stint in radio. Dean now leads Kerry by double digits in New Hampshire polls.

``The message is you can never really size up a campaign until you see the candidates out there doing their thing,'' said Spradling, who moderated a televised candidates' debate last year with ABC's Ted Koppel. (``I freely admit I was very nervous,'' he says of the experience.)

Last April, however, Glover recognized that Dean was doing a lot of things right.

``He was still a little-known governor from nowhere,'' Glover said, ``but they were doing all the right kinds of things you need to do to organize a grass-roots campaign. They were not only signing up volunteers but getting them involved, doing stuff together, doing the bonding thing.''

By May, he enlisted two other AP reporters to check out Dean volunteer meetings in cities around the country, and their story reflected that, indeed, something important was happening.